by Matthew Iden
“You’re talking about kidnapping, Randy. It ain’t nabbing a couple of bikes from a couple of rich movie stars.”
“No, it’s taking money from a couple of rich movie stars. There ain’t nothing different about this than the other thing. They’re not going to miss the money, no one’s going to get hurt, and the publicity about this is going to make them bigger celebrities than they were before. We’ll probably be giving them the biggest boost their careers have had in the last five years.”
Lee scrubbed his face with his hands. He felt like he was on a Tilt-A-Whirl at the state fairgrounds. He raised his head and looked at Randy, bleary-eyed.
Randy looked back. The Glock was loose in his hand. “You in or out, Lee?”
Lee swallowed. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, just nodded once, short and sharp.
Chapter Seventeen
When he found Lee and Randy, Baby Boy promised himself, he was going to rip the arm off one of them and beat the other with it. He wouldn’t even use a gun—he’d just beat them senseless, tie their peckers together, and throw them off a bridge. He might have some explaining to do to his big sister, but the satisfaction he’d get would make it worth it all the same.
The drive from Roanoke had started off well enough. The bucket of chicken lasted most of the day and, while six Cokes made him feel a little sick to his stomach, it did keep him awake for the twelve solid hours he needed to make up the ground on the two losers he was tailing. They had a day and a half on him as it was and, with two of them driving and no reason to dawdle, he figured they’d be able to pull fourteen hours a day on the road. So he planted his foot on the gas, only slowing down for the occasional state trooper or local cop. The only stops he made were to fill the gas tank and empty his bladder. In lieu of pulling over for lunch, he ate thirteen pieces of fried chicken from the bucket sitting on the passenger seat, wiping his hands on his jeans when he’d used the last napkin.
The trouble started with his first stop. He pulled into a motel outside of Chicago, tired and sick to death of chicken and Coke. He double-parked outside the office and went in to find a room. The day clerk was just getting off duty, so Baby Boy had to wait for the shift change to finish, then explain himself for the second time to the night clerk, a middle-aged black woman whose name tag read “Maureen.” Maureen wasn’t impressed when he couldn’t produce a credit card as a security measure and made it clear that she wasn’t intimidated by his size or his glare, pointedly moving aside so that the video camera behind her could record every second of their exchange.
Eventually, Baby Boy gave her a credit card, unhappy at the paper trail it would leave. Of course, now that he’d kicked up some dust, Maureen would probably remember him particularly well, but at this point Baby Boy didn’t care if she fingerprinted him and took his mug shot, he was so tired. He took the swipe card for the room and stomped outside, swinging the truck around to the exterior door to his room and looking around carefully before bringing in his shotgun case, the same one Brown had given him, and his one travel bag. He propped the shotgun in a corner, locked the door, and took off his coat.
It wasn’t a moment too soon. As he was about to turn on the TV, Baby Boy felt the first stirrings of indigestion, like a thunderstorm on the horizon. Not a moment too soon, he sprinted for the bathroom and spent the next hour on the toilet, swearing to himself he’d never touch fried chicken again. The night was fraught with trips back and forth to the bathroom and very little sleep. Baby Boy woke the next morning with less than four hours’ rest, a lingering ache in his gut, and in the mood to kill somebody.
Things improved on the second day. He threw away the rest of the chicken, drank just one Coke, and didn’t stop to eat until about two o’clock, waiting until he was damn near starving to pull over at an Italian restaurant in a little town whose name he couldn’t pronounce. He ordered three full plates of lasagna while the waitresses on duty watched, amazed, from the kitchen. Their aprons swung together as they leaned towards each other, whispering. When he finally finished, he winked at the cutest, left a fifty percent tip, and hit the road.
The first familiar rumblings in his stomach started an hour later and he had to pull off the road at a rest stop, causing the men’s room to clear out. The comments stopped when they saw his size as he opened the door of the stall, but the sniggers that followed him made him want to go to the truck, grab the Remington, and level the place with twelve-gauge buckshot. Instead, he climbed back into the truck and continued on, only to stop forty minutes later at an Exxon where he had to lift the manager off his feet by the shirt to get him to hand over the bathroom key.
It was in this manner, stopping and stuttering and shitting across America’s Heartland, that Baby Boy made his way towards Sturgis. Things calmed down on the second night when he caught some sleep, dreaming of fried chickens most of the night, dancing in the middle of the highway. The next morning, he skipped the measly breakfast of stale bagels and burned coffee, stopped instead at a doughnut shop, and crossed his fingers that his gut would behave for the rest of the trip. Once he’d hit the road, he punched the gas, figuring that the sooner he got this business over and done with, the sooner he’d be back in Roanoke to get some decent cooking.
It was the speed that got him in trouble. He tended to camp his truck in the far right lane, keeping the needle at eighty-five or ninety and glancing in his mirror frequently. Inevitably, he ran up on other cars and either sat on their bumper until they moved to the center or he lost his patience and passed them, whipping in front of them the second he’d cleared their front fender.
After about two hours on the road, he encountered a semi, a square-boxed rig with a cartoon chicken painted on the back door. The chicken was smiling and waving one wing; a voice bubble sprouted from the chicken’s beak. It said, “How’s my driving, chick?” and a phone number. The truck had to slow down as they hit an uphill slope and Baby Boy was soon right on top of the truck, staring at the chicken eight feet in front of him. It was the third or fourth time he’d had to slow down and he wrapped his hand around the horn and held it there for a minute from frustration.
Knowing it was futile—the truck wasn’t going to go any faster uphill—Baby Boy got in the left-hand lane and floored it, the F250’s engine roaring underneath him. As he passed the truck, he saw the trucker, a blurred face with a beard and fat sunglasses from a previous decade, mouthing curses at him. Baby Boy kept the gas pedal on the floor and stayed that way until he was doing a hundred before he stopped grinning.
A few minutes later, he was on the downslope of the hill, cruising once again in the right lane. At this speed, he thought, he’d make it to Sturgis by that night. He was relaxed, his stomach was under control, and he was enjoying the scenery when he glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly jumped out of his skin.
For most of the drive, he’d been able to see the entire gray ribbon of highway behind him, stretching back and away over the crest of the hill. Looking back now, there were headlights fifty feet off his back bumper and closing fast. The whole world in the mirror was nothing but truck. He swore and pushed it, taking his truck to ninety, then ninety-five. Still there. A hundred. The truck was on his ass, flashing its headlights and hitting the air horn. The blast was so loud his truck shook.
Sweat popped out on Baby Boy’s head and he felt adrenaline tingle in his legs and feet. He swerved to the left lane and the truck swerved with him, sticking to his bumper. Aside from the two of them, this stretch of road was deserted. It wouldn’t take much to nudge him off the highway and into oblivion.
Baby Boy continued to swerve back and forth between the lanes, trying to shake free, but the trucker settled for sitting dead-center on the road and simply nudged the truck left or right to stay on top of the smaller pickup. The semi’s momentum coming down the hill combined with its incredible horsepower was impossible for Baby Boy to beat. The semi inched forward until it felt like there was nothing but a coat of paint between them.
; Getting desperate, Baby Boy pounded the gas until he was doing a hundred and ten, then one-twenty. The truck was shuddering, the RPMs redlining. Finally, at one-twenty, hoping that the trucker thought he was just trying to outrun him, he swerved to the right lane, half off the road, and hit the brakes. The Ford fishtailed, throwing up a cloud of blue smoke and gravel. He hung on to the wheel like he was wrestling a bear, lifting his foot off the brake only when the semi screamed past, sounding like a force of nature as it almost clipped his back bumper.
Heart in his mouth, Baby Boy got back on the road and followed the semi at a distance. At its speed it was a half mile ahead in just a few seconds. Swearing, he put the truck on cruise control and reached behind the seat. It wasn’t easy with one hand on the wheel, but, after fumbling for a minute, he managed to slide the Remington from the case. Using just one hand on the pump, he racked a shell, then hit the button to bring his window down all the way. He rested the barrel on the window ledge and kept one hand around the stock, then took the truck off cruise and punched the gas.
About ten minutes later the truck appeared on the horizon, a steel box sitting on the highway. Another minute’s driving and he could see the chicken on the back. The trucker, satisfied that he’d scared the hell out of Baby Boy, had eventually slowed down to a regular sixty or seventy miles an hour cruising speed.
Baby Boy checked his mirrors, saw it was clear, and hammered the gas pedal. He reached the semi quickly, switching lanes at the last second and aligning himself just behind and to the right of the cab. The rig’s tires wouldn’t make a difference; trucks lost those all the time, leaving the ripped pieces along the highway. They could limp home on six of them if they had to. But the cab’s tires were another thing altogether.
Glancing at the lane ahead to make sure he wasn’t going to rear-end anyone, Baby Boy pulled close, poked the nose of the shotgun further out the window, and pulled the trigger. The kick nearly broke his arm; the explosion was deafening in the enclosed area. The barrel bounced off the top of the window ledge, thwacking against the frame of the pickup. But the blast had shredded one of the semi’s tires, the rubber peeling away like black spaghetti as the truck veered to the right. The trucker’s face flashed in the window, his mouth open. Baby Boy grabbed the pump of the shotgun and racked another round one-handed, rested the shotgun back on the ledge, and let go at another tire.
The second tire exploded like the first, rubber flying off down the road behind them. The truck began swerving in wider and wider arcs. Baby Boy floored the gas for the last time to get ahead, just missing the front end of the semi as he shot forward. It was too bad he had to watch the whole thing in his mirror, but it was better than being trapped behind the mess he had caused. The truck, out of control at seventy miles an hour, wobbled from lane to lane as the trucker tried to save it. The rig swerved violently one last time, back again as the driver overcompensated trying to right it, then the whole truck buckled inward on itself as it rolled. Sparks flew along the length of the rig as it skidded on its side down the highway. The last Baby Boy saw of it as he sped away was the smashed front windshield, the glass shattered in a radiating pattern like a spiderweb.
“Gimme a reason,” he said with a laugh. It kept him grinning for another hundred miles.
Baby Boy pushed through to Sturgis in one effort, finishing the leg of eight hundred miles in thirteen hours. The run-in with the truck had cheered him up for a time, but another mind-numbing day on the road had ended that. It was dark when he drove off the exit and into Sturgis proper, just in time to see the bikes and the crowds, but all he was interested in was a hotel. The first three clerks, despite his glowering, told him with a laugh that their rooms had been booked for weeks, months, or even a year. Nobody had a suggestion for other places to stay, except one comedian who suggested Rapid City. Baby Boy thought about taking a swing at him, but stopped himself when he realized the man was serious.
He decided eating would help him think. He found a steakhouse and ordered a T-bone, baked potatoes, and greens beans. Twice. The waitstaff wasn’t quite as astounded as the girls at the Italian restaurant—there were some big eaters at the Rally. After a wedge of apple pie, he sat for a while, rubbing his head with one huge hand.
Despite his promises to Raylene, he had no idea how to find Lee and Randy aside from the obvious: cruise the Rally, look around at the big events, and hope that in a week’s time—after a bunch of questions, threats, and bribes—he’d be able to scare them up. He had no way to call them to con them into meeting him, he had no real idea where they’d go to sell Lee’s bike, and figured if they had as much trouble as he’d had finding a place to stay, they could be sleeping in Wyoming, for all he knew.
He was casting about for better ideas than walking around Sturgis with his thumb up his butt when his cell phone rang. He frowned, pulled it out, and answered when he saw it was Raylene.
“Hey, Ray.”
“Hi, hon,” she said. Her voice was tight, surly. “You have any luck?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I just got here. Lee ever mention where he was going to sell that Harley of his? Or say anything at all?”
“Not then.”
“But?”
“The son of a bitch just called me ten minutes ago, told me to shut up and listen to him. I was fixing to give him a piece of my mind and he hung up on me. I was going to offer him another chance, but after that little performance, I’m packed and ready to go.”
Baby Boy asked her what got said and how, then said, “Sounds like you two are on the skids.”
“More than that, mister. He can kiss my sweet little ass, he thinks I’m sticking around.”
“Well…what do you want me to do? I just pulled in.”
“I don’t give a damn what you do. I’ve got a date with Bobby Chambers tonight. He’s going to help me forget all about Lee Baylor.”
“You said he called you?”
“Yeah, why?” she asked, sulking.
“On your cell, right?”
“Yes. That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
“Hon, you want to give me that number?”
She told him to hold on while she looked at her call log, then rattled off the number. He jotted it down, looking at the area code. “All right,” he said. “I think we’re in business.”
There was a pause. “You’re not going to hurt him too bad, are you?” Raylene asked, suddenly remorseful.
“Nah,” he said, thinking of his fist connecting with Lee’s face. “Just give him a talking-to. Ask him what kind of idiot leaves my sister alone and in need.”
“All right,” she said, immediately perky and satisfied. “Hugs, baby bro.”
“See you, Raylene.”
He ended the call, then scrolled through the address book on his own cell phone until he found the number he was looking for and dialed it. The other end picked up after seven rings.
“Henry? It’s Russell. Yes, it’s late. Need a favor. Or what? Or I’ll twist your skinny little head off, that’s what. Right.”
Baby Boy gave Henry the number and told him to call back when he was done. In ten minutes, his cell rang and he answered it. He jotted down the address that Henry’s reverse search had found from the phone number Raylene had provided. He smiled for the second time since starting the trip.
“Got you, assholes.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jason woke up after having the strangest dream. In it, he had been captured by a tribe of giant spiders who had bitten him, then strung him from the ceiling in their webs to slowly die of thirst and poison. In his half-awake state he was convinced that it was the beginnings of a great sci-fi adventure flick, maybe even something to go head-to-head with Starmoon Warriors next summer. It was only just before he opened his eyes that he felt his hands actually were tied together, that he realized he wasn’t dreaming. He almost had a panic attack right there, imagining the bristly hairs of a giant tarantula on the back of his neck.
He took five deep brea
ths as he’d been taught in his visualization and stress class and then opened his eyes bravely. No spiders, but a piercing shaft of sunlight that blinded him and intensified his splitting headache. His mouth was sticky and sour. His clothes—the same outfit he’d worn last night—were bunched and twisted around him uncomfortably.
His hands were numb from being behind his back, and his shoulders ached. He looked around, blinking and squinting against the sunlight. It looked like he’d made it home from wherever it was he’d been last night; this was the room where he’d broken the lamp.
“Becky,” he tried, but his voice was thick and crusty. He coughed, tasting the smoke and beer from last night. “Becky! Yo, Becky!”
There was no answer, so he tried rolling around on the bed, but his ankles were tied, too. Wow, he thought. I must’ve really pissed her off. Either that or he was in for some pretty good sex. Not that he was in the best form for it.
He heard someone coming down the hall. “Hey, Beck,” he said, talking to the wall, since he couldn’t roll over fast enough. “I appreciate the gesture, but you could’ve at least asked me—”
The words stopped as he managed to flop to his left side and get a look down the hall. Standing in the doorway was a skinny, hick-looking kind of guy, with a three-day-old beard and long, greasy blond hair. He was wearing dirty jeans and one of Jason’s favorite flannel shirts. The hick crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, grinning at Jason.
“Who are you?” Jason asked, blinking.
“Morning. Been wondering when you might roll out of bed. I imagine you have an awful headache, but it’s better than the alternative, seeing as how you came this close”—he held his fingers an inch apart—“to driving into the fish pond last night.”